how anti-zionist are we?

a guest post by Rafi G
cross-posted to LII

My wife was looking for an activity to keep the kids busy and thought a train ride would be exciting. So they took the train to the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv the other day.

The diaspora Museum shows a film reviewing 4000 years of Jewish history, touching on pretty much every time period and its basic events.

My wife told me there were a few other haredi families there watching the film at the same time. She told me that when the film started talking about Zionism and Hertzl, the Haredi families walked out.

I was not aware that the anti-Zionist sentiments were so strong among the average Haredi. After all, we are not Neturei Karta. We participate in the dealings and workings of the State. We participate in government. Since when is the Haredi position so anti-Zionist that you cannot sit through 2 minutes of Hertzl, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, and Begin?

Is sitting through the review of the Zionist leaders so much worse than sitting through the review of idolatrous nations, pagan nations, nations that murdered us and destroyed us? It is ok to here what they believed in but not what the Zionists believed in?

I guess because they are Jews, and if you consider them apikorsim (as perhaps some of them could possibly be considered, at least to some people), then perhaps their ideas, and thus the review of them, are worse. As we say in the Haggadah - Lavan was worse than Pharoah. Phaorah wanted to destroy our bodies, while Lavan wanted to destroy our souls. Maybe, to these people, the Zionists are worse, because their ideas, their apikorsus, will destroy our souls (if we expose ourselves and our children to them).


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